SOURCE: Méndez, Luis Felipe Clay. “Julián del Casal and the Cult of Artificiality: Roots and Functions.” In Waiting for Pegasus: Studies of the Presence of Symbolism and Decadence in Hispanic Letters, edited by Roland Grass and William R. Risley, pp. 155-68. Macomb, Ill.: Western Illinois University, 1979.

In the following essay, Méndez examines the cult of artificiality in Casal's prose, tracing its literary and contextual antecedents.

haz, ¡oh, Dios!, que no vean ya mis ojos la horrible Realidad que me contrista. 

—Julián del Casal¹

[Grant, oh, Lord!, that my eyes no longer see the horrible Reality that afflicts me.] 

Despite traditional interpretations that persisted in stressing an innate deficiency that determined Julián del Casal's character, a new and more accurate consideration of the social, political, and cultural pressures that weighed upon him is being brought to bear.² It is no longer valid, therefore, to...